“The surges certainly came when risk perceptions changed,but also when we acknowledged that we needed mass vaccination clinics,and local community-based programs,” she said.
“Those clinics at local mosques and churches,they may not have had huge numbers,but they critically reached people who were in a harder to reach group and may not have been able to get to a GP.”
Public health experts will beclosely watching figures this coming week to see what impact reopening has on infections. Fourteen days after restrictions eased,there has been transmission in bars and gyms although the state’s cases have remained relatively low.
Professor Adrian Esterman,chair of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of South Australia,puts the reproduction number in NSW’s overall outbreak at 1.1 – meaning every 10 people who catch the virus will infect 11 others – using a five-day moving average. By his calculation,the reproduction number passed 1 on the weekend,meaning cases will likely slowly increase.
“The[reproduction] numbers have been going up since Tuesday the 19th;we’ve seen a very slow but steady increase,” he said.
After a sharp decline over the past month,the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 has stabilised over the past three days at about 470 patients. Four additional deaths were recorded on Monday,bringing the total for the outbreak to 502.
University of Sydney professor of biostatistics Ian Marschner,who has been modelling the mortality rate of the outbreak,said his figures showed NSW had recorded 150 fewer deaths than would have been expected if the outbreak had occurred in an unvaccinated population.
“The vaccines are more protective than perhaps those statistics might indicate,but for much of this wave most of the cases coming through have been unvaccinated,” he said.
In the week ending October 2,aboutone in 10 positive COVID-19 cases were fully vaccinated and at least two-thirds had received no effective dose.
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Of course,October 25 was due to have one freedom NSW has not yet experienced:regional travel,which has been postponed until next Monday due to lower vaccination rates in some regional areas.
Thirty of the 33 local government areas yet to hit 80 per cent double-dose coverage are outside Greater Sydney.
Science lobby group OzSAGE has called for states to allow regional travel on a council by council basis,waiting for individual areas to achieve 80 per cent vaccination. The group expressed concern about cases overwhelming local health services and criticised the lack of published modelling of pandemic scenarios in regional NSW.
More than half of Monday’s 294 cases were outside of metropolitan NSW. Health authorities are concerned by rising cases in the suburbs of Albury and Kempsey,where double-dose vaccination rates are below 80 per cent.
Premier Dominic Perrottet was hesitant to agree the state had “dodged a bullet” when asked by reporters on Monday.
“This pandemic is not over. We are opening up and as we open up,case numbers will increase and hospitalisations will increase,” he said,adding he was confident the state was “ready”.
with Sarah McPhee and Pallavi Singhal